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Wow, I'm actually posting two days in a row! Perhaps I'm making a comeback. Probably not, though. Anyway, this is just a brief entry with some interesting links that I'm putting up before I go out for my first 10-mile run of the year.

Longhorn will be out soon, but not quite yet, because it's still a bit annoying.

I love the concept of the new Optimus Keyboard, which will be available next year. Each key is a small color video screen that displays what the key does at the moment. In other words, if Caps Lock is on, all the letters will be capital. Otherwise they will be lowercase. If you're in a program like Photoshop, each shortcut key will display an icon for its function (so you don't have to memorize the keys). I would use it to switch between Dvorak and Qwerty and also for foreign language configurations. (from Zannah)

As I continue to lose weight (21 pounds at last count) and get in shape, I worry that I may be doing it a bit too fast. My last two runs have gone significantly slower than previous ones and were a bit uncomfortable. I am especially concerned over yesterday's, which was only a three miler and should have been very easy. Tomorrow I am supposed to run ten miles, but, if my three-miler is any indication, I won't make it. It occurred to me that, with my rapid weight loss, I may be undernourished. I believe I've just finished compensating for that.

I just completed a huge feeding frenzy to pack my body with every possible nutrient I can cram into it. I started with one of those huge Stouffers mac and cheese family dinners, since my diet over the past several weeks has been completely devoid of macaroni. Then I polished off a couple pounds of fresh mozzarella balls for the calcium. And then, because I haven't had anything green in my diet for the longest time, I had a pint of pistachio ice cream, which has the added bonus off putting some much needed dairy into my diet. Also, instead of the usual orange juice, today I had about a liter of caffeine-free diet Dr. Pepper, which should help me to keep the pounds off.

I fear my posting frequency this summer is going to continue being abysmal, but I'll keep it going as best I can until get back to Oregon in September. In the meantime, here's a brief update on my life.

I'm still jogging on a regular basis. So far, I've managed to keep myself from getting injured. Last week I did my first 8-mile run. At the end of this week, I should be able to get in a 10-mile run. At this rate, it's quite possible that I may be in shape to run another marathon in October. I'm very excited about this.

The only setback I've had is that one of my new running shoes suffered a huge tear in the lower heel. Fortunately I was able to take it back to the store this morning in exchange for a new pair. I certainly hope that the new shoes hold together much better. I'm still a bit suspicious of the flimsy feel of the design, but Nike must know what they're doing.

My extremely low-fat diet combined with jogging has allowed me to lose a grand total of nineteen pounds since returning to Muncie. The first fifteen were easy, but these last four have taken forever, and I still need to take off an additional thirteen pounds to reach my arbitrarily selected target weight.

Is yard work interesting? Should I blog about that? Probably not, but I will anyway. I have a monster hedge growing at the side of my house. It's the type of thing only a professional with a large chainsaw can handle. I've finally found someone good to tackle it. He's even successfully removed some of the trees that had somehow become part of the hedge and grown extremely thick trunks. In the meantime, I've planted some gourds next to my porch screen. I try to do this every year. The results can be quite spectacular. The vines grow up the screens and then blossom into large orange flowers which then become colorful gourds. Anyone coming to my front door gets to walk behind a sort of canopy of vines and flowers. And I've also got sunflowers coming up. Perhaps I will post photos later in the summer.

Recently Tim expressed that he had never come across any of my video entries. I've noticed that my videos are frequently overlooked or at least don't tend to receive many comments. I thought I'd use today's post to put up links to all the videos I've put up so far.

I went to the drive-in again. Actually it was a different one located in Winchester. The features were quite a bit different from what I had to sit through last week. This time I got to see Willy Wonka and then War of the Worlds.

Willy Wonka is not bad and may be as good as the original. I thought the pacing was a bit slow, though. A movie like that really needs to be a bit more dynamic. Also I was confused by the scene with the oompa loompa harvesting chocolate from Chocolate Mountain. It had already been established that the oompa loompas could not tolerate the cold, and here was this little fellow going at it with a pickax in a blizzard. Of course, it may have just been a coconut storm. Also, the cow-whipping scene wasn't really necessary. Willy Wonka strikes me as a cross between Dr. Who and . . . well . . . er . . . Michael Jackson.

As for War of the Worlds, there is no way anything I write about it will do justice to Orionoir's review, so I'll just throw out a few points:

The aliens seemed a bit overly thorough. Are we supposed to believe that they actually spend forty-five minutes conducting a search of every single basement in the world? And what was with that mirror trick? Do they not have reflective surfaces on their planet? I mean, why waste so much time examining your own reflection? And how about actually checking behind the mirror rather than just peering over it? Why aren't they equipped with infrared sensors, so they can see people in the dark? And if they can't locate the people, why not just throw in some kind of grenade and blow up the basement? Oh, they might also want to consider investing in ax-proof equipment.

If the aliens planned the invasion a million years ago, why didn't they just invade then? It's kind of strange that, with all those deeply buried tripods, not a single one was ever discovered by humans. And wouldn't it have occurred to them after a million years of planning that germs might be a problem? Couldn't they have just sterilized the insides of the tripods and kept them hermetically sealed (and thoroughly cooked the humans before sucking on their juices)?

I like that they went after the Ukraine first. Way too many movies have the aliens going after New York first, or even exclusively.

I think the writers showed a lot of contempt for the masses. People couldn't possibly be that stupid. The scene with 10,000-people-fighting-over-an-SUV was a bit over the top, but it was nothing compared to the arrival of the aliens in New York. The people just had no sense of self-preservation. First everyone goes outside the watch the odd and menacing weather pattern. Then, after lightening strikes the same spot twenty-six times, they all rush over to that exact spot to have a look, even picking up the super-cooled cement pieces. Then the hole starts to get bigger. Then it gets really big and implodes. Then a car is hurled a hundred feet into the air. Now, at this point, it's perfectly understandable that people would just continue standing around watching, since there haven't yet been any indications of danger, but one would think that the emergence of a gigantic extraterrestrial tripod from the hole would cause them to flee. Nope, they have to wait around until it starts killing people with its disintegrator ray. Then they run.

How come the tripod that got bazookaed at the end didn't have a basket of people attached to its underside?

Now that the situation is under control, will the military be sent into Iraq as part of a full-scale assault on that country in retribution for the alien attack?

I forgot what the second thing was. When I started this entry, I definitely had two things of note in my mind, but I can't for the life of me remember what the second one was. Oh well, a pathetic post is better than no entry at all. sigh

a few minutes later

Oh wait, now I remember! Rowdy Theologian, one of the people who took an interest in my Burger Chef sound files entry. Now he's put up the video to an old Burger Chef commercial promoting Star Wars posters from episode IV, with some of the original characters. (I was surprised that Anakin didn't seem to recognize C-3PO; after all, he built him when he was a child.)

A few hours ago I went to the local drive-in. As you can see, I got to see Herbie: Fully Loaded, which was quite mediocre. (I just don't think it's right that they departed from the old movies by having Herbie be able to smile and blink.) This was followed by Bewitched. I really had a bad night.

I fear that I'm not going to be a very good blogger this summer. Since I left my computer in Oregon, I do all my blogging on my mother's computer, meaning that I have to go to my parents' house to use the internet. The lack of convenience seems to be slowing down my writing a bit and causing me to get behind on my daily blog reading, but I'll try to improve my posting frequency.

My weight loss has slowed down, but the pounds are still coming off. As of today I've lost 15 pounds since returning to Muncie. (I just have 17 more pounds to go to reach my ideal weight.) As a result, my back is feeling quite a bit better, and my running times are improving. I'm hoping to get in shape to eventually run another marathon, but, this early on, it's too early to know for sure. That was my plan last summer, and all it got me was a bad knee injury. Hopefully my weight loss will prevent that from happening again. Anyway, if I do run a marathon, it will be this one.

In other news, I've submitted two of my photos (this one and this one) for an exhibition in a local art gallery. They're hanging there right now, and I've heard rumors that they are fairly popular, especially the bird one. It will be interesting to see if anyone actually buys one.

I've been converting some old family audiotapes to mp3. This is a small excerpt that is relatively interesting. It's a conversation between my brother and me about what we want to have for dinner, followed by me recording various sounds around the house. Click here to listen.

I'm really excited about downloading torrents. Since a few weeks before leaving the U of O, I've made it a habit to always be downloading episodes from one television show or another. I actually spend more time watching downloaded programs than I do Netflix DVDs. Today I finished up the second and final season of Joan of Arcadia. That show had a lot of problems, not the least of which was that it's theology was based on ratings, but I was really intrigued by how it ended. It looked like they were planning to completely revamp the storyline for the non-existent third third season. There were a lot of different directions the show could have taken. (I was particularly looking forward to one day seeing Joan get burned at the stake; she is annoying, after all.) But I never imagined that the writers would try to make the show into a clone of Buffy. In the third season, she would be a regular high school student just trying to get by, but, in her spare time, she would be called upon by the forces of light (God and the dead people she was starting to see) to stop the forces of evil. Only she can bring balance to the world once again by defeating her evil nemesis. With only her schoolmates to help her, can she save the world in time, making it safe once more for Christianity? Perhaps they should have changed the name to "Joan and the God Squad".

Well, that's what it looked like to me. I may be exaggerating a bit, but not by much. Has anyone else seen the final episode?